Saudi Arabia

It is with a certain amount of trepidation that I write about Saudi Arabia. It is a very complex place, it is very secretive and still very repressive.  It is hard to get to grips with…… 

Saudi Arabia is a bleak country, a country seemingly under total reconstruction, building sites everywhere and then of course half the population is dressed from head to foot in a black abaya, with only the eyes visible, and the other half dressed in a white thobe and red headscarf (ghutra, secured by igal).  I can’t think of another country where there is quite such a uniform dress code.

Saudi Arabia, as we know it today was only unified in 1932, less than 100 years ago.  Before that, this vast area was inhabited by various tribal groups ruled over by warlords. It is extremely inhospitable and the small areas that could sustain life were fought over. Most groups were nomadic, constantly needing new grazing areas for their camels, thus creating conflict.  But geographically it is important, having coast lines up the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and historically it was an important transit area along one of the Silk Routes.   It was the remains of one of these Silk Route cities that attracted me to SA. The other reason for my interest, is how the events in Saudi Arabia, in the course of my lifetime, have affected us all.

Saudi Arabia is at the heart of Islam - Mecca (Makka) where Mohammed was born is the hub of Islam attracting millions of the faithful every year to perform the Hajj, the single largest gathering of human beings in the world… and then there is the Grand Mosque in Medina where Mohammed died and is buried. 

My first insight into just how powerful this religion is was on the aeroplane over to Jeddah. Just before take off a prayer was said over the public announcement system for our safety, asking Allah to recognise our good deeds.  I was seated very near the rear of the plane and assumed a curtained off area was part of the catering facility and couldn’t quite understand the constant comings and goings. When I popped my head through the curtain I found a carpeted area with a television screen showing the direction of Mecca and several men in prayer. During the course of the flight many of the men changed from their street clothes into their pilgrim outfit which consists of 2 white towels, one around the waist and the other thrown over the shoulder.

Religion is absolutely central to everything and has certainly played its part in the history of Saudi Arabia. 

Mohammed was in his late 30’s when God started speaking to him in Mecca about social reform: the rich to give to the poor, women entitled to a portion of their parents legacy, polygamy limited to 4 wives, an eye for an eye etc.

Mohammed’s insistence that there was only one God didn’t go down too well with the merchants in Mecca who made their money from the pilgrims who came to pray to the hundreds of gods who were worshipped there at the time. 

Mohammed was persecuted and fled north to Yathrib.  This migration marks the beginning of Islamic history and in Yathrib he and his followers lived as free Muslims, building a mosque and forming a religion based on the 6236 verses of Mohammed’s recitation which now form the Qur’an.  Yathrib was renamed El Medina, the city of the Prophet, and it is there that Mohammed created a life precisely as God had instructed.

The religion took hold and soon spread throughout the Middle East. Over time the way the religion was observed changed as it adapted to the times.

Then in the 16th century Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, in a time when life had become more relaxed, espoused a return to the fundamental way of life of the Prophet. He joined forces with the Salafi movement, a reform branch of the Sunni also advocating a return to the early generations of Muslims - they ‘Command Right and Forbid Wrong’. They were/are an extreme orthodox group. It is here you have the beginnings of this powerful fundamentalist religious alliance, the Wahhabis and the Salafis, in the north of the country.

Then politically, if we fast forward to the early 20th century, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, a powerful sheikh, used these strictly religious people of the north as warriors to extend Saud power and by 1932, when he had united all the land into the present day Saudi Arabia under the House of Saud, he dispatched with the warriors.  But they continued to make raids into neighbouring countries so Abdul Aziz sent in his army and massacred them. This radicalised the remainder, and led by one Juhayman, acts of terrorism were committed by these fanatics against the House of Saud. One of which was the siege of the Great Mosque in Medina, one of the holiest places of Islam, where a group smuggled in arms in coffins and laid siege to the Mosque and the siege was only broken when they were eventually blasted out. The Bin Laden family construction firm rebuilt the mosque.

In the 1930’s the worldwide recession hit the Saudi income from pilgrims and money was needed so a mineral exploration agreement was signed with Standard Oil of California.  The Saudis were paid in gold sovereigns, still being suspicious of modern money. 

With the oil boom in the 1970’s and the influx of enormous wealth, petrodollars were spent in Saudi Arabia building infrastructure, schools, hospitals etc.  There was a policy of modernization and reform, and young men were sent to UK and USA to be educated. They returned to SA to run the oil businesses but by now much influenced by western culture. This westernisation involved limiting the power of Islamic religious officials. 

This worked for a while and we all became dependent on Saudi oil until a succession of US leaders started supporting Israel and outraged the Arabs. After the Yom Kippur war of 1973 King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz launched the Arab Oil Boycott which led to our 4 day week etc, an impressionable time for me as I had just emmigrated from South Africa to be faced with piles of garbage on the streets and bodies going unburied...  But all the while through the ‘70s and ‘80s the US military were training and financing the SA army and financing anti-communist movements in the area.

In 1979 there came a backlash from the religious right and King Khaled turned to the religious leaders for support turning SA fundamentalist once more under the guidance of the Wahhabis and the Salafis. The government also gave refuge to the Muslim Brotherhood which had formed in Egypt and SA became a cauldron of fanaticism.

In 1985 the price of oil again dropped dramatically with it’s discovery in Canada, Alaska and North Sea and this led to another world recession. SA economy was again in trouble, now with a young population having only ever had an Islamic education which left them unprepared for the modern world. The disaffected young men again became easy targets for radicalisation and the Madrassas became recruiting grounds for ‘The Islamic Awakening’. Islam was encouraged through the massive printing of the Quran and Wahhabism was spread throughout the world with the building of mosques everywhere.  Throughout the 1980’s the Islamic Awakening gained strength.  Then in 1989 Russia withdrew from it’s war with Afghanistan and within months the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Iran-Iraq war also ended, with no clear result and Saddam Hussein was left with a huge army, huge unemployment and a failing economy due to the oil glut. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait.

All the while, Saudi Arabia run strictly by the House of Saud faced conflict between the religious right and demands for liberalisation. Corruption and nepotism was rife. The right torched videoshops and women’s shelters and the liberals simultaneously demanded democratic reform.  King Fahd clamped down hard on all opposition and news of human rights violations became a concern for the international community. By the end of the 1990’s the oil price again dropped and youth unemployment was severe. SA had imported cheap foreign labour now and the fact that education had been religious, so the young had no reasoning skills, created another generation of radicalised men.

“If as a country you adopt the Quran as your constitution, then all your wars must be holy wars, those who die for their country are holy matyrs - and the secret police are doing the work of God”

While still a young man, Osama Bin Laden, son of a respected, wealthy and powerful businessman originally from the Yemen but living in Saudi Arabia, was inspired by the teachings of Salafi fanatics. He was by all accounts an isolated man and separated from his family.  He became radicalised during the 70’s and 80’s and was involved with the religious right, providing money and succour to Saudi men fighting with the Mujahadeen against Russia in Afghanistan.  Before leaving Afghanistan he named his organisation Al Queda.  He then spent the 90’s in the Sudan using his vast fortune to fund international jihad. In 1994 he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and disowned by his family.

Osama Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan as the Taliban filled the vacuum left by the Russian withdrawal and Al Queda and the Taliban gained ascendancy. In 1999 the UN levelled sanctions against the Taliban and Al Queda. Bin Laden declared war on the US and masterminded the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.  America’s response was paralysed by the Clinton-Lewinski affair and there were bodged attempts to retaliate.  When  George W Bush was election in 2001, his support of Israel created an even greater rift between Saudi Arabia and USA.  On the eve of 9/11 Bush tried to reconcile with Saudi Arabia and condemned Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and supported a two nation state solution, the start of a possible end to the Middle East conflict…..and then the 2001 Twin Tower disaster happened……

Within a month the US and UK invaded Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabia increased the output of oil to prevent an energy crisis and opened up a dialogue with the US. The US were unprepared - on 9/11 the FBI and CIA were not in communications with each other and the FBI only had 5 Arab speakers on it’s books.  The US and Saudi Arabia set up an anti-terrorism pact.  King Abdullah set about another phase of modernisation and because of the effects of 9/11 was able to override the religious right and gain the upper hand. In particular he modernised education for both boys and girls.  In 2003 there was another religious backlash, this time terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia were directed against foreigners by Saudi jihadists driven out of  Afghanistan and encouraged by Osama Bin Laden. This brought an intense clampdown in Saudi Arabia and many arrests of terrorists. But it also brought onside the ordinary Saudi, turning away from fanatical religion, in the interests of protecting their new found lifestyle.  Very conscious of not creating another generation of jihadists, those arrested were punished but then rehabilitated - some even given £10000 to pay for a dowry on a bride - a silent recognition of the sexual frustration in a repressed society.  In 2005 a Human Rights Watch was set up and Saudi Arabia joined the WTO and reformed it’s business practice thus encouraging foreign investment and trade.  The economy boomed and huge construction works began. 

Throughout the 2000’s and the 2nd Gulf war, SA was doing huge arms deals with the US and UK - a multi million pound deal with Thatcher was done where by 2004, the UK had spent £60million on entertaining the Saudis alone. Remember Thatcher’s son’s involvement? In return the US had enormous airbases in SA. The US is said to have sold $60 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia - the most lucrative single arms deal in US history.

“If you subject a society to all these pressures - a rigid religion, the tribe, the traditions, the family, the police, and above all a repressive political system in which you can’t express yourself - you are going to end up with wackos.  And then if you present them with the doctrine of Takfeer, the idea that all their problems come from outside themselves, and that you should destroy people who do not share your particular view of God, then you are going  to end up with some very dangerous people indeed.”

SA is a very young country and in under 100 years has changed from a feudal society to being one of the richest countries on earth with a strong religion that attempts to drag it back into medieval times.  Slavery was only outlawed in Saudi Arabia in 1962 and Saudi Arabia still has one of the most repressive regimes in the world and as late as 2019 a mass execution by beheading of 37 accused terrorists, whose confessions were obtained under torture, was held. 

I have no idea what it is actually like to live in Saudi Arabia, no-one understandably would engage in any kind of meaningful dialogue, but wherever I went I was welcomed with smiles and photographs. Perhaps to our sensibilities one of the telling things about the country is that there are NO dogs anywhere but feral cats everywhere…..